The Tell el Amarna period. The relations of Egypt and western Asia in the fifteenth century B. C. according to the Tell el Amarna tablets

.A5

SMC

THE ANCIENT EAST

No. II.

THE TELL EL AMARNA
PERIOD

BY

CARL NIEBUHR

The Ancient East

Under this title is being issued a series of short, popular,
but thoroughly scientific studies, by the leading scholars of
Germany, setting forth the recent discoveries and investiga-
tions in Babylonian, Assyrian and Egyptian History,
Religion, and Archeology, especially as they bear upon the
traditional views of early Eastern History. The German
originals have been appearing during the last eighteen
months. The English translations made by Miss Jane
Hutchison have been submitted in each case to the A uthors,
and embody their latest views. Short, helpful bibliographies
are added. Each study consists of some 64 to 80 pages,
crown 8vo, and costs Is. sewed, or Is. 6d. cloth

The following are issued:

THE REALMS OF THE EGYPTIAN DEAD. By Pro-
fessor ALFRED WIEDEMANN.

THE TELL EL AMARNA PERIOD. By Dr. C. NIEBUHR.

THE BABYLONIAN AND THE HEBREW GENESIS.
By Professor H. ZIMMERN.

THE BABYLONIAN CONCEPTION OF HEAVEN
AND HELL. By Dr. ALFRED JEREMIAS.

POPULAR LITERATURE IN ANCIENT EGYPT.
By Protessor ALFRED WIEDEMANN.

THE

TELL EL AMARNA
PERIOD

THE RELATIONS OF EGYPT AND WESTERN
ASIA IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY B.C.

ACCORDING TO
THE TELL EL AMARNA TABLETS

BY CARL NIEBUHR

TRANSLATED BY J. HUTCHISO

LONDON: DAVID NUTT

57-59 LONG ACRE

1903

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. THE TABLETS, AND How THEY WERE FOUND

1. Position of Tell el Amarna ... 9

2. The Find . 10

3. General Contents n

II. THE EGYPTIAN COURT AND ADMINISTRATION

1. The XVIIIth Dynasty .... 14

2. Amenophis IV. and his Reforms . . 16

3. The Royal Residence and Court . . 17

4. The Asiatic Provinces . . . . 18

5. Pharaoh and Asiatic Politics . . . ig
III. LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS

1. Modes of Address 23

2. Letters from Kadashman-Bel ... 24

3. Letters of Tushratta to Amenophis III. . 27

4. Accession of Amenophis IV. . . . 31

5. Letters from Burnaburiash ... 32

6. Letters from Assyria, Alashia, and the

King of the Hittites .... 33

7. Letters from Tushratta to Teye and

Amenophis IV. 36

CONTENTS

PAGB

IV. LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS

1. Mode of Address 39

2. Aziru the Amorite and Rib-Addi of Gebal 40

3. Akizzi, Labaya, &c 44

4. Abdikheba of Jerusalem and the Habiri . 45

5. Milki-El and Tagi ..... 46

6. Robbery of Foreign Ambassadors . . 48

7. Abi-milki of Tyre ..... 49

8. Other Letters: Adad-nirari, Yabitiri, Mut-

Addi, the "synoptists" .... 50

9. Itakama of Kadesh 53

10. The Lands of Ubi, Ugarit, and Danuna . 54

11. Letters from Women .... 56
V. POLITICAL CONDITIONS IN THE TELL EL

AMARNA PERIOD

1. Causes of the Situation in Syria and Canaan 56

2. Position of the Kingdom of Mitani . . 58

3. Its Fall 59

4. End of the Reform in Egypt 59

THE TELL EL AMARNA
PERIOD

I. THE TABLETS, AND How THEY WERE FOUND.

As early as 1820 it was known in Europe that in
Middle Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile, in
the district between Minieh and Siut, there lay the
remains of a great city of Ancient Egypt. The
Prussian exploration expedition of 1842-45 gave
special attention to this site, where indeed were
found, about sixty miles south of Minieh, exten-
sive ruins, beginning at the village of Haggi
Kandil and covering the floor of a rock-bound
valley named after the fellahin village, El Amarna.
At that time the ground-plan of the city was still
easy to distinguish ; the regular lines of the streets
could be traced, and enough could be seen of the
great design of the principal temple to excite the
admiration of the discoverers. This example of the
layingout of an ancient Egyptian town still remains
almost unique, for of old, as now, private buildings
were constructed of flimsy material. That the

io FINDING OF THE TABLETS

Tell el Amarna remains have escaped rapid de-
struction is due entirely to the sudden and violent
downfall of the original splendour of the city and
the complete desolation which succeeded. The
importance of the place was revealed on examina-
tion of the surrounding cliffs. Here were found,
sculptured and inscribed in a new and peculiar
style, the rock-cut tombs of the most distinguished
inhabitants of Akhet-haten, the royal city built
for himself about 1380 B.C. by Amenophis IV.,
and destroyed soon after his early death.

In the beginning of 1888 some fellahm digging
for marl not far from the ruins came upon a
number of crumbling wooden chests, filled with
clay tablets closely covered on both sides with
writing. The dusky fellows must have been not
a little delighted at finding themselves owners of
hundreds of these marketable antiquities, for which
a European purchaser would doubtless give plenty
of good gold coins. To multiply their gains they
broke up the largest tablets into three or four
separate pieces, often to the grievous hindrance
of the future decipherer. But very soon the
matter was fruited abroad ; the Government at
once intervened, almost all the find was in due
time secured, and a stop was put to any further
dispersal of separate tablets and of fragments.
The political situation in Egypt is pretty accu-
rately indicated by the fact that about eighty of

GENERAL CONTENTS n

the best preserved of the Tell el Amarna tablets
at once found their way to the British Museum.
Some sixty were left in the museum at Boulak,
and about one hundred and eighty were secured
for the Berlin Museum, many of them tiny frag-
ments, but mostly containing important records.
Few have remained in private hands.

Some alabaster slabs came to light at Tell el
Amarna bearing the hieroglyphic names of King
Amenophis IV. and his father, Amenophis III.
These had evidently served as lids to the chests.
Some tablets also were inscribed with notes in
hieratic, written in red ink. But in spite of these
exceptions, it was at once recognised that all the
documents were written in Babylonian cuneiform.
The reading of the introductory lines on various
tablets served to show that the find consisted of
part of the Egyptian state archives in the times
of the two kings Amenophis III. and IV. Thus
the first of the many startling discoveries that
were to follow in such rapid succession was made
in the recognition that about 1400 B.C. the Semitic
speech of Babylon served as the language of
diplomacy in the East.

Apart from a few tablets dealing with mytho-
logical subjects and written in Babylonian, and
two which contain inventories, all the tablets were
letters. Most of them were from Egyptian offi-
cials in Syria and Canaan, and usually they were

12 THE WRITING

addressed to the king. Among them were found
many long letters from Asiatic kings to the
Egyptian monarch, and also a few communications
from the Foreign Office of " Pharaoh " himself.
We must note, however, that this title of Egyp-
tian kings, so commonly used in the Old Testa-
ment, is apparently never once employed in the
Tell el Amarna documents. It is interesting to
observe how difficulties of the script and of a
language not entirely familiar to most of the
scribes were overcome. Even the learned scribes
of the royal " House of the Sun " in Egypt had
obviously their own troubles in the matter, and
made use of the Babylonian mythological texts
already mentioned as a means of improving their
fluency. Of this we have evidence in the thin
red lines by which, on these tablets alone, the
words have been separated from each other. The
governors and officials must not be classified as
educated or uneducated on the evidence of their
letters ; all alike employed professional scribes,
of whom one might be skilful and the next a
bungler whose communications must be guessed
at rather than read. Occasionally a Babylonian
word is followed by the corresponding Canaanite
word, also in cuneiform, but marked as a transla-
tion. Like the Egyptian kings, so the Asiatic
sovereigns had each his staff of scribes. One of
the petty chiefs, Tarkhundarash of Arsapi, was

THE CORRESPONDENTS 13

evidently so unhappy as to have none in his Court
who could read or write a letter in Babylonian,
for letters to him were written in his own tongue.
The scribe of the Hittite king produced only a
species of dog Latin, while the scribe of the
king of Alashia trots out his whole vocabulary
unhampered by grammar. On the other hand,
the letters of the king of Mitani are drawn up in
the characters known as Assyrian ; and it is pro-
bable that the Assyrian system of cuneiform may
have originated in Mitani. If so, for the Mitani
scribe there could be no question of any special
difficulty in using the acknowledged language of
diplomacy in the Ancient East.

It is evident that the Babylonian royal scribes
at length showed some consideration for their
unfortunate Egyptian correspondents by writing
as a rule in phonograms which could be easily
spelt out, since strange ideograms might have
brought the reader to a standstill. The sources
of the letters may be distinguished also by the
colour and consistency of the material of the
tablets, which are of all shades of clay, from pale
yellow to red or dark brown. Side by side, too,
with hard and legible pieces, lie broken and
crumbling fragments which have suffered sadly
during the few years that have elapsed since they
were again exposed to the air.

M COURT AND ADMINISTRATION

II. THE EGYPTIAN COURT AND ADMINISTRATION.

The two Pharaohs of the Tell el Amarna Period
belong to the XVIIIth Dynasty, which about
1 560 B.C. had freed the land from the yoke of certain
Asiatic invaders known as the Shasu. The new
dynasty soon began to encroach upon Asia. King
Thutmosis III. (1503 to 1449 B.C.) after many
chequered campaigns conquered Syria as far as
the Gulf of Iskanderun. On the African side he
extended the bounds of his kingdom to the con-
fluence of the Nile and the Atbara, so that the
greater part of Nubia owned his sway. The
terror of his name did not die with him, but for
long did good service to his successors, the
first of whom, Amenophis II., seems moreover
himself to have maintained energetically the fame
of Egyptian arms. To this influence our clay tablets
bear witness by twice making emphatic reference
to the days of the powerful " Manakhbiria " — the
prenomen of King Thutmosis III. With the acces-
sion of Amenophis III. the warlike spirit ceased to
prevail at the Court of Thebes. Nothing more was
to be gained by Egypt in Western Asia, and the
tastes of the new king lay in other directions than
war. The two celebrated Colossi of Memnon
(statues of himself), many great buildings, the im-
portant part played by his favourite wife Teye, the
well-filled harem, the cultivation of M wisdom "

THE RELIGIOUS REFORM 15

(which practically, no doubt, was tantamount to
what we should call " preciosity "); last, but not
least, the solemn adoration of his own divine image
— all these facts combine to indicate the altered
condition of things which came about under Amen-
ophis III. He reigned thirty-six years, long
enough to allow the movement introduced by
him to run its course. His son, Amenophis IV.,
was, however, just as little inclined as his father
to walk in the steps of his warlike ancestors.
Hampered apparently by bodily defects, this Son
of the Sun tried his strength in a field often
far more dangerous than the battlefield. He
began a reform of the Egyptian religion, appa-
rently in the direction of a kind of monotheism
in which the chief worship was reserved for the
disk of the sun, the symbol under which the
god Ra was adored at Heliopolis in the Delta.

Nothing being known of the life of this king
as heir-apparent, probably we shall never under-
stand what led him to take this new departure.
From his conduct during the early years of his
reign it may be concluded that he intended to
proceed gradually, but was roused to more aggres-
sive measures by the resistance of the powerful
priests of Amon in Thebes. These men acted,
of course, for their own interests in promptly
resisting even mild attempts at reform. Perhaps
also the king's aim had been from the outset to

1 6 COURT AND ADMINISTRATION

weaken the influence of the Theban hierarchy
by new doctrines and to strengthen the royal
power by steady secularisation. Open strife be-
tween the adherents of Amon and those of the
Sun's Disk, the "Aten," broke out in the second
or third year of Amenophis IV., that is, about
1380 B.C. The immediate removal of the Court
from Thebes to Tell el Amarna points to a
failure of the royal efforts, for the command to
build the new city had not long been issued, and
the place was still altogether unfinished. The
official world promptly broke with the old religion.
The king altered his throne-name, " Amen-hetep,"
to "Akhen-Aten," "The glory of the Sun's Disk";
His young daughters received names compounded
with "Aten," whilst the courtiers found it advis-
able to strike out "Amen," if this chanced to form
part of their own names, and to substitute for it
"Ra," as having more or less the same significance
as "Aten." " The doctrine," as the new dogmas
were called in inscriptions at Tell el Amarna,
was regarded as so entirely a matter of home
politics in Egypt, that the officials of Syria and
Palestine — all foreigners — do not seem to have
received any formal information regarding it.
Most of them continue to refer to Amon in
perfect innocence, and only a few who were
better informed began rather later to take the
change into account. Thus Yitia of Ashkelon.

THE ATEN DOGMA 17

Pu-Adda of Wurza, and a certain Addudaian
correct the name of the Egyptian commissioner
"Amanappa" into "Rianappa." Abimilki of Tyre
apparently even tried to give himself out as one
initiated into " the doctrine," and to represent his
city as a servant of Aten. If this were the case
he must have received a severe rebuff, for after
his one attempt he falls back into the old style.
Neither the royal nor the national pride of Egypt
would suffer any such familiarities.

The new capital received the significant name
of "Akhet-Aten" (" Horizon of the Sun") and
was solemnly consecrated long before it was half
finished. The widow of Amenophis III., the
queen-mother Teye, came occasionally to visit
the new capital, and was received with all honour;
evidently she had paid timely respect to her son's
opinions. How far the Aten dogma represented
real progress in religious thought can be gathered
only from the contents of a few hymns remaining
on the walls of some of the tombs. In these the
expression of devout feeling seems to have become
richer and more spontaneous, and the monotheistic
tendency is evident. This characteristic, how-
ever, may often be observed by a sympathetic
reader in the hymns to Amon, and even to less
important deities : the deity adopted as a special
object of worship by any individual is always
favourably represented by him. The Aten dogma,

B

1 8 COURT AND ADMINISTRATION

being based on natural phenomena and not on
mythology, was, of course, heretical.

Those of his officials who had accepted "the
doctrine" were regarded by Akhenaten as de-
serving men, and on this ground alone, Ai, called
Haya in the Amarna letters, received golden
honours to the full. This Haya, who was en-
titled " beloved royal scribe/' was probably a
secretary of state, and was once sent as a special
ambassador to Babylonia. Dudu occupied another
important post ; Amanappa, who has already been
mentioned, seems from a letter written by him to
Rib-Addi of Gebal, to have been a commander-in-
chief. Hani, Salma, Paura, Pahamnata, Hatib
Maya, Shuta, Hamashni, and Zitana all appear
as the bearers of royal commissions in Syrian
territory. An official named Shakhshi receives
instruction as to the conducting of a royal
caravan. But to the Asiatic vassals the most
important office of all was the governorship of
Lower Egypt, the country called "Yarimuta," an
office filled at this time by Yanhamu. The letters
afford abundant evidence that any vassal who had
incurred Yanhamu's enmity must walk warily.
The minister of the king of Alashia, though his
equal in rank, sent gifts to this dangerous man,
who had harassed merchants of Alashia by de-
manding from them illegal dues. Rib-Addi of
Gebal lost land and throne, in spite of the counten-

THE ASIATIC PROVINCES 19

ance of Amanappa, because such was Yanhamu's
pleasure; and of Milki-El of Gath he made a
severe example, to which we shall refer later.

On the whole, the Asiatic provinces enjoyed
self-government under the supremacy of Egypt,
and the disadvantages of this condition of things
are revealed in numerous letters. These end
almost invariably with a request to the king to
come in person to the aid of his distressed
vassals, or at least to send troops. Sometimes
this was done, but usually such expeditions seem
to have been undertaken with inadequate forces
and seldom resulted in permanent peace. The
native princes, chiefs, and village headmen were
perpetually struggling with each other. They
made alliances among themselves, or they entered
into secret treaties with neighbouring states and
afterwards brazenly denied them. This wretched
state of affairs may be traced to two principal
causes — the tribute question and the immigration
of Bedawin tribes.

The king was not to be trifled with when tri-
bute was overdue. The most valid excuses — loss
of territory, war, failure of the harvest — were
received with a suspicion doubtless justified in
general but which must have caused much hard-
ship in individual cases. The ordinary tribute
was fixed, as well as the regular subsidy for
royal troops and the force which had to be raised

20 COURT AND ADMINISTRATION

in emergencies. But the gifts — such as female
slaves — which must needs be sent not only to the
courtiers but even to the king himself, added
enormously to the burden, so much so that to
the poorer chiefs a summons from Egypt to
appear in person meant little less than ruin.
Resistance to it was so surely to be counted on
that such a summons was often kept in the
background more as a threat than anything else.
Now and then petty chiefs in Palestine and Syria
withheld their bushels of corn, their three oxen
or their twenty sheep; or perhaps they were
so sparing of bakshish that the tribute itself was
swallowed up and vanished entirely from the
accounts. It was scarcely possible to take costly
measures to punish such delinquents, so the
business was turned over to some kind neigh-
bour of the recalcitrant chief, and a little war was
soon fairly ablaze. But when direct commands
of royal ambassadors were treated as of doubt-
ful authenticity, it was hardly likely that the
authority placed in the hands of an equal would
meet with much respect. Both leaders received
reinforcements ; a third intervened at a moment
favourable to himself; many and often very
remote quarrels broke out, and when at length
the royal commissioners hurried upon the scene
it was hard for them to say whether or not
the original sentence had been executed. Cer-

THE SYRIAN BEDAWlN 21

tainly most of the property of the original
offenders had been largely lost or destroyed,
but the plunder had crumbled away in passing
through countless hands, and the royal official
might seek it from Dan to Beersheba, or farther,
but in vain. Out of the first difficulty a dozen
others had arisen, till the suzerain seized upon
his dues by force, yet without leaving peace
behind him. The tablets are full of references
to these complicated struggles, which it is not
always possible to follow in detail.

Additional confusion was caused by the im-
migration of Bedawin tribes. In the north the
nomadic Sutu, in the south the Habiri pressed
forward and encroached upon Egyptian territory.
It is evident that this further pressure was
calculated to bring matters to a crisis, for, like
the tribute, it affected pre-eminently the vassal
chiefs and tribes. We find the Habiri especially
in the very act of ruining some of these petty
princes, others of whom preferred to make
treaties with their unwelcome guests, though this
indeed was apparently in secret only. But the
Sutu reached the domains of more powerful
vassals, and by two of these, Aziru and Namjauza,
were openly taken into pay. Obviously such
alliances with land-seeking plunderers could only
prolong and embitter the strife. In Palestine, no
doubt, peace as regards Egypt would soon have

22 COURT AND ADMINISTRATION

been restored had not the Habiri proceeded to
seize certain strongholds, which they used as
centres for further expeditions, thus involving the
settled inhabitants in wider quarrels. What with
the help of the Bedawin, and the universal un-
rest any ambitious vassal of Egypt must at length
have seen a tempting prospect of establishing an
independent kingdom, if only he could deceive
the Egyptian Government long enough as to his
intentions, and delay or thwart any measures that
might be taken against him.

Certainly the government of Pharaoh did not
lack for watchfulness and was well, if not too well,
served in the matter of information. But in the
Jace of perpetual complaints and counter-com-
plaints, entreaties for help and what were for
the most part incredible assurances of everlasting
fidelity, there was no course for the king and his
councillors to take but either to order a military
expedition on a large scale, or to turn a sceptical
ear to all alike and confine their attention simply
to the tribute. Pride and weakness combined led
them to take the dangerous middle course and
send inadequate bodies of men singly into the
disturbed districts. A certain amount of success
attended the policy; the king's Nubian "Pidati"
were dreaded from of old, and his mercenaries, the
Shirtani, were looked upon as invincible. When
it was a mere question of hundreds in the field

LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS 23

against hundreds, the appearance of a company,
or of a few troops, restored peace for a time, but
serious and aggravated hostilities between masses
of rebels could not always be checked by such
small numbers, and it was a severe blow to the
prestige of the Shirtani when they were defeated
at Gebal by the Sutu.

The knowledge that Egypt was far away, and
that the Son of the Sun was highly exalted, led
the chiefs and officials in Syria and Canaan to
deeds of open defiance of their suzerain. Am-
bassadors from foreign states were robbed in
passing on their journey to Egypt, caravans were
plundered, and gifts sent to Pharaoh were inter-
cepted. All this notwithstanding, still the stream
of rhetorical devotion flowed on in the letters.

III. LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS.

Akhenaten had taken with him to the new
capital part of the archives of his father. With
few exceptions, it is not from the letters of vassals
that we learn this, for these, as a rule, are
addressed simply " To the King." The foreign
sovereigns, however, almost always addressed the
Pharaoh by his prenomen. Thus neither " Amen-
hetep" nor "Akhenaten" appears in the Tell el
Amarna letters, but always "Nimmuria" (i.e.t Neb-

24 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS

maat-Ra) for Amenophis III. and "Napkhuria"
(i.e., Nefer-khepru-Ra) for Akhenaten. Dating
there was none in correspondence of that time
and hence these addresses are of great chrono-
logical importance.

Four communications to " Nimmuria" from the
Babylonian ruler Kadashman-Bel (at first in-
correctly read Kallima-Sin) are among the most
important in this respect. The writer calls his
land Karduniash, a name for Babylonia used by
the Assyrians after the native employment of it
had long ceased. Kadashman-Bel himself be-
longed to the house of the Kassite chiefs, who,
about two hundred and fifty years previously, had
invaded and conquered Babylonia, but who after-
wards fully adopted Babylonian manners and
customs. It is at once apparent that Nimmuria
and Kadashman-Bel approach each other as equals.
The Egyptian, however, was supposed to possess
one very precious thing in superfluity, namely,
gold ; for at that time the gold mines of Nubia
were in good working. The Babylonian letters,
therefore, seldom failed to contain a hint that the
king desired some of the precious metal, some-
times as a return gift for rich presents he had
given the Egyptian, sometimes as temple-offerings,
or as a dowry. Matrimonial alliances were the
principal means by which a ruler kept on good
terms with neighbouring princes, and Oriental

ROYAL MARRIAGES 25

polygamy allowed a great deal to be done in that
line. It is noticeable that the claim made by the
Egyptian king to divine honours soon began to
cause little difficulties in diplomatic intercourse.
Not that " the Son of the Sun " claimed adoration
from his royal compeers : that was expected from
his subjects only. But he showed the greatest
reluctance to give away a daughter to any foreign
king. Moreover, the fact must not be overlooked
that it was precisely in the XVIIIth Dynasty that
brothers and sisters of the royal house so fre-
quently intermarried, a custom afterwards affected
by the Ptolemies and implying simply that the
royal race of the Pharaohs being emphatically
divine was therefore essentially exalted above
the world in general. According to this flattering
fiction there could be no equal union for a king of
Egypt except with his own sister. No such
marriage seems to have been made by Nimmuria,
but, as if in amends for that, he worshipped, as
above stated, his own divine image. We need
not wonder, then, that he regarded his children
as divine manifestations and hesitated to bestow
them in marriage.

Kadashman-Bel seems to have thoroughly
appreciated this little weakness, and no doubt
the mortal gods on the Nile were a subject for
mockery at the Courts of Western Asia, even in
those days. Thus, a remark of Nimmuria's to

26 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS

the effect that no princess had ever been given
away from Egypt is answered with delightful
dryness :

" Why so ? A king art thou, and canst do accord-
ing to thy will. If thou give her, who shall say
anything against it ? I wrote before, ' Send, at least,
a beautiful woman.' Who is there to say that she is
not a king's daughter ? If thou wilt not do this,
thou hast no regard for our brotherhood and friend-
ship."

Kadashman-Bel threatened that he in his turn
would hesitate to give his daughter in marriage,
and would make similar evasive excuses. At
last, however, the negotiations came to the desired
conclusion, and for a time gifts flowed more freely
on both sides.

Valuable, though in many respects puzzling, is
a large tablet containing a letter of Nimmuria to
Kadashman-Bel. Possibly it may have been kept
as a copy, and in that case it must belong to the
early part of the correspondence. More probably
however, the letter is an original which came back
"undelivered" to Egypt, the addressee having
died in the meantime. Kadashman-Bel had com-
plained that his sister, who had been given by his
father in marriage to the Egyptian, had subse-
quently never once been seen by any Babylonian
ambassadors. Certainly a woman in royal garb
had been pointed out, but not one of them had

TUSHRATTA OF MITANI 27

recognised her as their own princess. "Who
knows that it was not some beggar's daughter,
a Gagaian, or a maiden of Hanirabbat or
Ugarit whom my messengers saw ? " Then
Nimmuria took up the tale, and complained that
Kadashman-Bel sent only ambassadors who had
never frequented his father's Court, and were more-
over of adverse bias. " Send a kamiru " (evidently
a eunuch is meant) "who knows thy sister."
Further misunderstandings come under discussion,
from which it is evident that the general situation
between the two princes was very much strained.
King Tushratta of Mitani was a phenomenon
in his way. In Egyptian inscriptions his kingdom
is called Naharina — i.e., " Mesopotamia." One of
his tablets bears the following official memoran-
dum, written in red ink and in hieratic :

" [Received] in the two-[and-thirtieth year of the
reign of Nimmuria], in the first winter month, on the
tenth day, the Court being at the southern residence
(Thebes), in the Residence Ka-em-Ekhut. Duplicate
of the Naharina letter brought by the messenger
Pirizzi and (another)."

Tushratta's dominion was wide, extending from
south-eastern Cappadocia to beyond the later
Assyrian capital, Nineveh. But the kingdom of
Mitani, occasionally called after the northern
fatherland of its people, Hanirabbat, was nearing
its fall. In the south it had a dangerous enemy

28 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS

in Babylonia ; in the north and west the Hittites
were hostile and all the more to be dreaded
since Mitani-Hanirabbat was inhabited by a
people related to the Hittite stock. The kings
of Mitani soon realised that their existence was
best secured by a steady alliance with Egypt.
To this end Artatama and Shutarna, the two pre-
decessors of Tushratta, had sent their daughters
to the harem of the Pharaohs. The so-called
"marriage scarab" of Nimmuria bears witness
to this, and reference to the bond is often made
by Tushratta. Before he could ascend the throne
he had various difficulties to contend against, of
which a faithful account is sent to Egypt :

" When I ascended my father's throne I was still
young, for Pirhi did evil to my land and had slain its
lord. Therefore he did evil to me also and to all my
friends. But I quailed not before the crimes that were
committed in my land, but slew the murderers of
Artashumara my brother, with all their adherents.
Know also, oh, my royal brother ! that the whole
army of the Hittites marched against my land. But
the God Teshup, the lord, delivered them into my
hand and I destroyed them. Not one man from
their midst returned to his own land. And now I
have sent to thee a chariot and two horses, a youth
and a maiden, the booty of the land of the Hittites."

This letter betrays itself as one of the earliest
written for Tushratta by the fact that it makes no
request for gold. All his later letters are filled

TUSHRATTA OF MITANI 29

with greedy entreaties, completely giving the lie
to the immediate pretext under which they were
professedly written. One of them, more than a
yard long and proportionately broad, still keeps
its charms to itself, since for some unknown
reason, though written in cuneiform character
like the rest, the language is that of Hanirabbat
and this we are still unable to read. Nimmuria
indeed, seems to have had a weakness for this
worthy brother-in-law and his ingenuous manner
of approaching him, and spared neither presents
nor promises ; at his death, however, some of the
latter remained unfulfilled. Evidently neighbour-
ing kings heard at length of Tushratta's financial
success and were naturally envious. An extract
will give the reader a more definite notion of this
royal correspondence with its stylisms and turns of
thought. The following is taken from Letter VIII.
in the British Museum edition. The long-winded
introduction was already a fixed convention, and
occurs in all the letters from whatever country,
but the declaration of affection is peculiar to
Tushratta :

" To Nimmuria, the great king, the king of Egypt,
my brother, my brother-in-law j who loves me and
whom I love : Tushratta, the great king, thy (future)
father-in-law, king of Mitani ; who loves thee and is
thy brother. It is well with me ; may it be well
with thee, with thy house, with my sister and thy

30 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS

other wives, with thy sons, thy chariots, thy horses,
thy nobles, thy land, and all that is thine, may it be
well with them indeed ! Whereas thy fathers in their
time kept fast friendship with my fathers, thou hast
increased the friendship. Now, therefore, that thou
and I are friends thou hast made it ten times closer
than with my father. May the gods cause our friend-
ship to prosper ! May Teshup, the lord, and Amon
ordain it eternally as it now is ! I write this to my
brother that he may show me even more love than he
showed my father. Now I ask gold from my brother,
and it behoves me to ask this gold for two causes :
in the first place for war equipment (to be provided
later), and secondly, for the dowry (likewise to be
provided). So, then, let my brother send me much
gold, without measure, more than to my father. For
in my brother's land gold is as the dust of the earth.
May the gods grant that in the land of my brother,
where already so much gold is, there may be ten
times more in times to come ! Certainly the gold
that I require will not trouble my brother's heart, but
let him also not grieve my heart. Therefore let my
brother send gold without measure, in great quantity.
And I also will grant all the gifts that my brother
asks. For this land is my brother's land, and this
my house is his house."

All Tushratta's letters are written in this tone
with the exception of the last. Nimmuria felt his
end approaching, and entreated the aid of " Our
Lady of Nineveh." Such an expedient was not
foreign to Egyptian thought. A late inscription
professes to tell how a certain divine image was
sent from Thebes to a distant land for the healing

AKHENATEN 31

of a foreign princess. From Tushratta's answer
also it appears that the statue of the goddess
Ishtar had once before been taken from Nineveh
to Thebes.

This letter begins solemnly :

" The words of Ishtar of Nineveh, mistress of all
lands. ' To Egypt, to the land that I love will I go,
and there will I sojourn.' Now I send her and she
goes. Let my brother worship her and then let her
go in gladness that she may return. May Ishtar
protect my brother and me for a hundred thousand
years. May she grant unto us both great gladness;
may we know nothing but happiness."

All this notwithstanding, Nimmuria must die, and
later Tushratta describes his own grief on the
occasion :

" And on that day I wept, I sat in sorrow. Food
and drink I touched not on that day ; grieved was my
heart. I said, « Oh, that it had been I who died ! ' "

When he wrote thus the feelings expressed were
probably genuine, for times had changed sadly for
him and men of his type.

We have now come to the accession of the
reforming king Napkhuria — i.e., Akhenaten.
This zealot succeeded in bringing into the foreign
relations of Egypt some of the unrest caused, by
his measures in home politics. To begin with,
he sought for new political alliances and sacri-
ficed those already existing, not by breaking off
the connections, but by turning a deaf ear to

32 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS

requests, or by adopting an insolent tone in his
answers. On one occasion he showered on the
old beggar Tushratta derision which was no
doubt well deserved, but which it was most im-
politic to express so plainly. He gives one the
impression of an inexperienced prince, brought
up in Oriental seclusion, who persists at all
hazards in playing the part of a shrewd and
worldly-wise ruler. He strained after novelty at
the expense of his own security, and attempted
to demonstrate the strength of the supports of his
throne by sawing them through.

About the time of Nimmuria's death Kadashman-
Bel of Babylonia also died, and Burnaburiash,
probably his brother or cousin, was prepared on
his accession to maintain the traditional friend-
ship with Egypt. But at the very beginning
Napkhuria was guilty of a breach of etiquette in
neglecting to send any expression of sympathy
during a long illness of Burnaburiash. In spite
of many fine words, the usual matrimonial nego-
tiations did not run smoothly ; moreover, attacks
were made on travelling messengers, and at length
Napkhuria's avarice forced the Babylonian to
measures of retaliation, and he writes :

" Since ambassadors from thy fathers came to my
fathers, they also have lived on friendly terms. We
should continue in the same. Messengers have now
come from thee thrice, but thou hast sent with them

BURNABURIASH 33

no gift worthy the name. I also shall desist in the
same way. If nothing is denied me I shall deny thee
nothing."

Meanwhile, the dear brother in Egypt was con-
tinually finding opportunities to annoy the Baby-
lonian. Assyria was then a small state on the
middle Tigris, in exactly the same relation to the
suzerainty of Babylonia as Canaan was to that of
Egypt. Disregarding this fact, Napkhuria sent a
very large quantity of gold to the prince Assurna-
dinakhi and ostentatiously received an Assyrian
embassy. Burnaburiash, in remonstrating, re-
ferred to the loyal conduct of his father, Kurigalzu,
who had answered the Canaanites with threats
when, in an attempted rising against Nimmuria,
they offered to do homage to Kurigalzu.

" Now there are the Assyrians, my vassals. Have
not I already written to thee in regard to them ? If
thou lovest me they will gain nothing from thee. Let
them depart unsuccessful."

This exhortation seems to have been vain, for a
letter of the next Assyrian king, Assuruballit,
speaks of a regular exchange of messengers, and
indicates that the Sutu of the desert — doubtless
at the instigation of the Babylonians — were about
to kill every Egyptian who showed himself in
their territory.

A prince of Alashia, who never mentions either

C

34 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS

his own name or that of the Egyptian king, wrote
short letters, for the most part of a business
character. Alashia probably lay on the Cilician
coast. Gold did not tempt him ; he asked mo-
destly for silver in return for copper, for oil,
textiles and manufactured articles in return for
wood for building. Thus the tablets from Alashia
are rich in information regarding commercial
matters and questions of public rights. They are
of special interest for us, owing to the fact that
one of them contains the first historic mention of
the plague.

" Behold ! my brother, I have sent thee five hun-
dred talents of copper as a gift. Let it not grieve
my brother's heart that it is too little. For in my
land the hand of Nergal (the god of pestilence) has
slain all the workers, and copper cannot be produced.
And, my brother, take it not to heart that thy mes-
senger stayed three years in my land. For the hand
of Nergal is in it, and in my house my young wife
died."

Yet this ruler also had to guard himself against
embassies unworthy of a king sent by Napkhuria.
Another prince, in a letter unfortunately much
damaged, made the complaint that Napkhuria had
once caused his own name to be written first in a
letter. This was, indeed, unparalleled; the title
of the recipient stands first even in a severe repri-
mand sent to the Egyptian vassal Aziru As if

TUSHRATTA 35

to equalise matters, in royal letters the greetings
that follow the address begin with a mention of
the welfare of the writer. " It is well with me.
May it be well with thee," &c. There is, however,
one tablet addressed to Napkhuria that committed
the offence complained of, and it was perhaps for
this reason that the introductory address was
scratched through anciently. It is fairly certain
that this letter, as well as the one complaining of
Napkhuria's breach of etiquette, came from the
Hittite king. The tone throughout is very decided,
and complaints of neglect of proper consideration
are not wanting.

A short time before his death Nimmuria had
married another daughter of Tushratta, Tadukhipa,
the long inventory of whose dowry was found at
Tell el Amarna. On receiving the news — for
which he was already prepared — of the death of
his hoary-headed son-in-law, Tushratta at once
sent Pirizzi and Bubri " with lamentations " to
Napkhuria. He managed to suppress his persona
wishes up to the third message, but prepared the
way for them by calling Teye, the chief wife of
Nimmuria, as a witness. " And all the matters
that I negotiated with thy father, Teye, thy mother,
knoweth them; none other besides knoweth of
them." Immediately after this came the request
that Napkhuria should send him the "golden
images" (statuettes) that Nimmuria had promised

36 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS

him. And Napkhuria wasted no words, but sent
by the messenger Hamashi — the wooden models !
He seems to have thought he was acting as a
good son and a shrewd man of business in ful-
filling his father's promises at so cheap a rate.

But Tushratta was not easily shaken off. His
next move was to send Teye and her son each a
letter at the same time. He gave polite greetings
from his wife Yuni to the widow, whose influence
was evidently still strong, sent her presents, and
entreated her intercession. This remarkable
letter runs as follows :

" To Teye, Queen of Egypt, Tushratta, King of
Mitani. May it be well with thee, may it be well with
thy son, may it be well with Tadukhipa, my daughter,
thy young companion in widowhood. Thou knowest
that I was in friendship with Nimmuria, thy husband,
and that Nimmuria was in friendship with me. What
I wrote to him and negotiated with him, and likewise
what Nimmuria thy husband wrote to me and nego-
tiated with me, thou and Gilia and Mani (Tushratta's
messengers), ye know it. But thou knowest it better
than all others. And none other knows it. Now
thou hast said to Gilia : ' Say to thy lord, Nimmuria
my husband was in friendship with thy father and
sent him the military standards, which he kept. The
embassies between them were never interrupted. But
now, forget not thou thine old friendship with thy
brother Nimmuria and extend it to his son Napkhuria.
Send joyful embassies; let them not be omitted.'
Lo, I will not forget the friendship with Nimmuria !
More, tenfold more, words of friendship will I ex-

TUSHRATTA 37

change with Napkhuria thy son and keep up right
good friendship. But the promise of Nimmuria, the
gift that thy husband ordered to be brought to me,
thou hast not sent. I asked for golden statuettes.
But now Napkhuria thy son has had them made of
wood, though gold is as dust in thy land. Why
does this happen just now ? Should not Napkhuria
deliver that to me which his father gave me ? And
he wishes to increase our friendship tenfold ! Where-
fore then dost thou not bring this matter before thy
son Napkhuria ? Even though thou do it not he
ought nevertheless to deliver unto me statuettes of
gold and in no way to slight me. Thus friendship
will reign between us tenfold. Let thy messengers
to Yuni my wife depart with Napkhuria' s ambassador,
and Yuni's messenger shall come to thee. Lo, I send
gifts for thee ; boxes filled with good oil (perfume),"
&c. &c.

To Napkhuria also Tushratta insists on his
rights in detail. The messengers from Mitani
were said to have been present at the casting of
the images, and even to have started on their
journey home when Nimmuria died. It may thus
be assumed that Napkhuria at once ordered the
transport to be brought back. Queen Teye evi-
dently showed no desire to be mixed up in so
unpleasant a business, but Napkhuria demanded
that the messenger Gilia should be sent to him.

Most probably this often-mentioned Gilia was
the witness present at the casting and despatching
of the images. Tushratta gave evasive answers,

,8 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS

and his last letter (more than two hundred lines
in length) is something in the nature of an ulti-
matum. On both sides fresh complaints are
brought forward, and the settlement of each one
of them was made dependent on the settlement
of the principal question. Napkhuria threatened
to close his land against all subjects of Mitani,
and, as no later document has been found, it is
probable that at this point all intercourse ceased.
A much mutilated letter from Gebal to Egypt
announces the departure of the king of Mitani
with an armed force ; but it is doubtful whether
this can be quoted in the present connection.

The characters of the two irreconcilable
monarchs, who show each other up so admirably
for our edification, make any question as to which
had right on his side seem comparatively trifling.
Tushratta was evidently much distressed that he
dared not venture to send his Gilia back again
and that none of the later letters which he had
from Nimmuria contained any word of the golden
images. It is evident also that Napkhuria, sup-
ported by Teye, had actually recalled embassies
that his father had already sent out. The old
king, who had called Ishtar of Nineveh to his
help, may have been brought by the approach of
death into a generous state of mind not uncom-
mon in such cases. Even now we say, " He
must be near his end," when a man shows unex-

LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS 39

pected and unusual gentleness. It is quite
possible that Nimmuria had ordered the images
in question to be made for his worthy friend
without giving any formal promise to send them,
and that as soon as Tushratta learned what had
happened, he promptly interposed with a lie, in
hope of appealing to Napkhuria's sense of the
fitness of things. That, however, was expecting
too much.

IV. LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS.

Four-fifths of the number of letters consist of
reports and communications from Egyptian go-
vernors, military commanders, magistrates, and
other officials in Western Asia. The form of
address from these subordinates to the Pharaoh
is naturally very different from " Royal Brother/'
and in hurried announcements it is often con-
tracted. Written in full the long formula runs :

" To he king, my lord, my gods, my sun, the sun
of heaven ; Yitia, prefect of Askelon is thy servant,
the dust at thy feet, the servant of thy horses. At
the feet of the king my lord seven times and again
seven times I prostrate myself upon my back and
upon my breast."

The importance of these letters, however, con-
sists in the substance of what they report and in

40 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS

what they tell us as to the doings of the writers.
They are the data by reason of which the Tell el
Amarna archives constitute a unique store of
historical material for the study of the history of
civilisation.

Warlike expeditions among the vassal chiefs
were the order of the day. Most dangerous of
all the chiefs was Aziru, prefect of the land of the
Amorites, whose territory included the district
north of Damascus and part of the valley of the
Orontes. In the hope of founding an independent
kingdom, Aziru had swiftly seized on the domi-
nions of all the chiefs on his northern boundary,
and in this action his admirable understanding
with the Egyptian officials afforded him invaluable
help. The town of Tunip sent a truly pathetic
letter to Pharaoh from which we learn that Aziru
had already taken Nii, was besieging Simyra in
Phoenicia, and at the same time, by the aid of his
creatures at Court, had succeeded in preventing
the king from reinstating a prince of Tunip who
had been sent into Egypt as a hostage. This
prince, a certain Yadi Addu, had already been
released and was on his way home when the allies
of Aziru caused him to be recalled.

" If, however, we have to mourn," so the complaint
proceeds, " the king himself will soon have to mourn
over those things which Aziru has committed against
us, for next he will turn his hand against his lord.

RIB-ADDI 41

But Tunip, thy city, weeps ; her tears flow ; nowhere
is there help for us."

The most bitter complaints against Aziru and
his father Abd-Ashera come from Rib-Addi of
Gebal. His utterances rival the Lamentations of
Jeremiah both in volume and in monotonous
pathos. One of these many letters, the contents
of which are often stereotyped enough, is also
noticeable for its revelation of the connection of
Rib-Addi, who must already have been an elderly
man, with Amanappa :

" To Amanappa, my father ; Rib-Addi, thy son !
At my father's feet I fall. Again and again I asked
thee, 'Canst thou not rescue me from the hand of
Abd-Ashera? All the Habiri are on his side; the
princes will hear no remonstrances, but are in alliance
with him ; thereby is he become mighty.' But thou
hast answered me, « Send thy messenger with me to
Court, and then will I, if nothing be said against it
(i.e., by the king), send him again and again with
royal troops to thee till the Pidati march forth to
secure thy life,' Then I answered thee, ' I will not
delay to send the man, but nothing of this must come
to the ears of Abd-Ashera, for [Yanhamu has] taken
[silver] from his hand.' (As much as to say that if
Abd-Ashera gives Yanhamu a hint, the messenger
will never get beyond Lower Egypt.) But thou hast
said, 'Fear not, but send a ship to the Yarimuta,
and money and garments will come to thee thence.
Now, behold, the troops which thou hast given me
have fled, because thou hast neglected me, while I
have obeyed thee. He hath spoken with the official

42 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS

(Yanhamu ?) nine times [in vain]. Behold, thou art
delaying with regard to this offence as with the others.
What then can save me ? If I receive no troops I
shall forsake my city, and flee, doing that which seems
good to me to preserve my life."

Yanhamu's bias against Rib-Addi is made
evident in many other letters which the poor
wretch addressed to the Court :

" If I should make a treaty with Abd-Ashera as
did Yap-Addi and Zimrida, then I should be safe.
Furthermore, since Simyra is indeed lost to me, and
Yanhamu hath received Bit-Arti, he ought to send
me provision of grain that I may defend the king's
city for him. Thou, oh king, speak to Yanhamu ;
'Behold, Rib-Addi is in thy hand, and all injury done
to him falls on thee.' "

This desire was not complied with, for the
Phoenician vassal was at length robbed of all
his cities and possessions, so that even the callous
Egyptian Government felt obliged at last to send
a threatening embassy to Aziru, the son of Abd-
Ashera, and the real author of the difficulties in
Gebal. At the same time the surrender was
demanded of certain " enemies of the king," who
were in all probability principal adherents of
Aziru. When the messenger Hani arrived with
this note, Aziru, evidently warned in good time,
had promptly vanished over the hills, and none of
the royal commands could be carried out. He

AZIRU 43

pretends to have settled down in Tunip, which he
must previously have seized, but at once returned
home on hearing of Hani's arrival. Unfortunately
it was too late. The cunning Amorite brought
forward one excuse after another. " Even if thy
actions be just, yet if thou dissemble in thy letters
at thy pleasure, the king must at length come to
think that thou liest in every case," is a passage
in the letter brought by Hani. Aziru replies in a
tone of injured innocence :

" To the great king, my lord, my god, my sun ;
Aziru, thy servant. Seven times and again seven
times, &c. Oh, lord, I am indeed thy servant ; and
only when prostrate on the ground before the king,
my lord, can I speak what I have to say. But
hearken not, O lord, to the foes who slander me
before thee. I remain thy servant for ever."

This trusty vassal added to his other known
faults the peculiarity of conspiring readily with
the Hittite foes of the Court. His insolence
helped him successfully out of these awkward
difficulties also whenever the matter came under
discussion. When preparing fresh raids he did
not hesitate to invent news of Hittite invasions
which he was bound to resist, and all territory
which he then took from his co-vassals would,
according to his own account, otherwise certainly
have fallen into the hands of the enemy. But
as the result was always the same — i.e., to the

44 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS

advantage of Aziru alone — the opinion began to
prevail in Egyptian councils that this restless
vassal should be summoned to Court and tried.
For many years Aziru succeeded in evading these
fatal and dangerous, or at best very costly orders.
But finally he was forced to obey, and with heavy
heart and well-filled treasure chests set off for
Egypt. Apparently he relied on his principal
ally Dudu, whom in his letters he always ad-
dresses as " father"; but this pleasant alliance
did not avail to protect the disturber of the
peace from provisional arrest. The last letter
in the Aziru series, which had obviously been
confiscated and subsequently found its way back
into the archives, is a letter of condolence from
the adherents or sons of Aziru to their imprisoned
chief. Nevertheless, the political activity of the
Amorite chief seemed to many Syrian, and
especially to Phoenician princes as on the whole
for the good of the land, and, therefore, to be
supported. His appearance put the longed-for
end to a far less endurable condition of things.
Two communications from Akizzi, the headman of
the city of Katna, near Damascus, exhibit the
difference clearly. When Akizzi sent his first
communication to Nimmuria every petty chief
went raiding on his own account : Teuwatta of
Lapana, Dasha, Arzawia and all the rest of them.
These vanished with the entrance of Aziru upon

THE HEBREWS 45

the scene, though the change was by no means
welcome to Akizzi. In the Lebanon things were
no better. Here Namyauza was struggling with
the headmen of Puzruna and Khalunni. "They
began hostilities together with Biridashwi against
me and said : ' Come, let us kill Namyauza.' But
I escaped." This promiscuous warfare raged
most fiercely in the south. Here a certain Labaya
tried to play the part taken by Aziru in the north.
But fortune was less favourable to Labaya. Prob-
ably he failed to induce his undisciplined officers
to act in unison, and the unhappy man's sole
achievement seems to have been the welding of
his foes into a compact body against himself. He
lost his territory, kept up the struggle a little
longer as a freebooter, was taken captive at
Megiddo, escaped again on the eve of being
shipped to Egypt, and fell in battle or died a
natural death after at length meeting apparently
with some success in Judaea.

Jerusalem was under a royal " Uweu," a term
perhaps best rendered "captain," named Abdi-
kheba. A neighbouring prefect, Shuwardata,
asserted occasionally that he had entered into
conspiracies with Labaya, and Abdikheba in fact
complained of hostilities on all sides. Milki-El
and his father-in-law Tagi, chiefs in the Philistian
plain near Gath, were his principal opponents.
They recruited troops from among- the Habiri in

46 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS

the hope that Abdikheba, finding himself practi-
cally blockaded, would weary of the struggle and
abandon the field. He was evidently very nearly
driven to this when he wrote :

" Infamous things have been wrought against me.
To see it would draw tears from the eyes of the king,
so do my foes press me. Shall the royal cities fall a
prey to the Habiri ? If the Pidati do not come in
the course of this year, let the king send messengers
to fetch me and all my brethren that we may die in
the presence of the king, our lord."

By the Habiri we must here understand no
other than the Hebrews, who were therefore
already to be found in the " Promised Land," but
had not yet firmly established themselves there.
They swarmed in the Lebanon, where Namyauza
had formally enlisted one of their hordes ; and
yet it seems as if they already held Shechem and
Mount Ephraim as free tribal property. At any
rate, no letter thence to the king has been dis-
covered, although there is one mention of the
city Shakmi (Shechem). The genuinely ancient
passages in the scriptural accounts of the con-
quest in the Book of Joshua, and still more the
valuable fragments in the first chapter of Judges,
are fairly in accordance with what we here learn
from the tablets.

Abdikheba's letters may be considered along
with those of Milki-El and Tagi, of whom Yan-

COMPLAINTS OF NEGLECT 47

hamu, the powerful official, had just made an
example. Their voices take up the chorus of
complaint :

ABDIKHEBA. " Lo ! Milki-El and Tagi have done
as follows. . . . Thus, as the king liveth, hath Milki-
El committed treachery against me. Send Yanhamu
that he may see what is done in the king's land."

MILKI-EL. " The king, my lord, shall know the
deed done by Yanhamu after I had been dismissed
by the king. Lo, he took three thousand talents from
me and said to me, * Give me thy wife and thy sons
that I may slay them.' May my lord, the king,
remember this deed and send us chariots to bring us
away."

TAGI. " Am I not a servant of the king ? But
my brother is full of wounds so that I can send no
message by him to the king. Ask the rabisu (a
title of Yanhamu) whether my brother is not full of
wounds. But we turn our eyes to thee, to know
whether we may rise to heaven or creep into the
earth; our heads remain in thy hand. Behold, I
shall try to make my way to the king by the hand of
the surgeons."

MILKI-EL. "I have received the king's message.
Let him send the Pidati to protect his servant, and
grains of myrrh gum for healing."

As already pointed out, the blame for such
occurrences belongs in the first place to the
Egyptian system of government. How little the
petty princes could expect, whether of good or
evil, from their suzerain is shown by glaring
examples. King Burnaburiash complained that

48 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS

a Babylonian trading company established by his
ambassador in the Canaanite city of Khinaton
had, immediately after the ambassador's depar-
ture, been attacked and utterly plundered. The
principals were killed, and the rest — some of them
mutilated — were sent into slavery. " Canaan is
thy land ; thou art king of it," continues Burna-
buriash. " It was in thy land that I suffered this
injury; therefore restrain the doers of it. Re-
place the stolen gold, and slay the murderers of
my subjects to avenge their blood." Whether
this was done was extremely doubtful, for part of
the plunder had in all probability already sufficed
to secure a safe retreat for the brigands, who,
furthermore, were officials from some of whom
letters have been found. The natural consequence
was that the ambassadors themselves were at-
tacked. Their caravan with gifts for Napkhuria
was robbed twice in succession, and they them-
selves were held to ransom. The Egyptian
Government nevertheless remained outrageously
slack as ever, as we may see from the following
safe conduct granted on behalf of the Canaanite
miscreants: "To the princes in the land of
Canaan, the vassals of my brother. Akiya, my
messenger, I send to the King of Egypt my
brother. Bring him safe and quickly to Egypt.
Let no violence befall him."

Prefects of Canaanite ports were naturally in

ABI-MILKI 49

most active communication with Egypt. On some
of the shrewder minds among these men it had
dawned that it pleased and amused the king to
have immediate news of messages by sea and
land from far and near communicated in their
letters. Abi-milki of Tyre had carried this practice
farthest, and he was also admirably skilful in
lodging complaints by the way. We owe to this
worthy one of the choicest pieces in the whole
collection, the elegant paean of a place-hunter of
more than three thousand years ago. It will be
noticed that some of his rhetorical expressions
repeatedly recall those of the Hebrew Psalter in
the same way as do phrases in the letter of Tagi
already quoted. In fact, the Bible critic has much
to learn from the tablets as a whole. After
the formal beginning, Abi-milki launches out as
follows :

" My lord the king is the Sun-God, rising each
day over the earth according to the will of his
gracious father, the heavenly Sun-God (Aten). His
words give life and prosperity. To all lands his
might giveth peace. Like the (Phoenician) god Ram-
man, so he thunders down from heaven, and the
earth trembles before him. Behold, thy servant
writeth as soon as he has good news to send the
king. And the fear of my lord, the king, fell upon
the whole land till the messenger made known the
good news from the king my lord. When I heard
through him the command of the king to me, ' Be at
the disposal of my high officials,' then thy servant

D

50 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS

answered his lord, ' It is already done.' On my
breast and on my back write I down for myself the
commands of the king. Verily, he who hearkeneth
to the king his lord, and serveth him with love, the
Sun-God riseth over him, and a good word trom the
mouth of his lord giveth him life. If he heed not
the commands of his lord his city will fall, his house
will perish, and his name will be known no more for
ever in all lands. But he who followeth his lord as a
faithful servant, his city is prosperous, his house is
secure, and his name shall endure for ever."

The letter continues for some time in the same
strain, but at the end the courtier bethinks him of
his office of informer, and adds hastily :

" Furthermore, Zimrida, the prefect of Sidon, sends
a report every day to Aziru, Abd-Ashera's son. Every
word that comes from Egypt he telleth to him. I,
however, tell it to my lord, that it may serve thee, oh
my lord ! "

Two princes, Adad-nirari of Nukhashi and
another whose name is now illegible, apparently
take a higher rank than their neighbours. Nukhashi
is often named in these tablets as well as in Egyp-
tian inscriptions, and it must have been situated on
the north-east slope of the Lebanon range. We
have also letters from the towns of Biruta (Bey-
rout), Hashab, Hazi, Kumidi, Kadesh on the
Orontes, Sidon, Akko, Ruhiza, Megiddo, Hazor,
Gezer, Gaza, Lachish, Shamhuna, Mushihuma,
Dubu, and others, while there are many -more so

GEOGRAPHICAL DATA 51

mutilated that their origin can no longer be deter-
mined.

These letters, though by no means all cf them
containing important contributions to the history
of political intrigue, are often of interest from the
light they throw on manners and customs. A
few further extracts are therefore given here.

" To the king my lord, my gods, my sun ; Yabitiri
is thy servant, the dust of thy feet, &c. And a
faithful servant of the king am I. I look hither, and
I look thither, but it is not light ; then I look to the
king my lord, then there is light. A brick may be
removed from its firm bed, but I move not away from
the king's feet. Let my lord the king ask Yanhamu,
his rabisit. While I was still young he brought me
to Egypt, and I served my lord the king and stood
at the gate of the palace (as page). And to-day, let
my lord the king ask his rabisu, I guard the gates
of Gaza and of Joppa. I am also attached to the
Pidati of my lord the king ; whither they go thither
do I go with them, as even now. On my neck rests
the yoke of my lord the king, and I bear it."

The following tablet from the neighbourhood of
the Jordan promises good results as the reward of
future research for geographical details :

" To Yanhamu, my lord : Mut-Addi is thy servant
at thy feet. I told thee before, and it is so indeed ;
Ayab hath fled in secret, as did also previously the
king of Bihishi before the commissioners of the king
his lord. Is Ayab now in Bihishi ? [He is there]
truly as the lord king liveth, truly as he liveth. For

52 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS

two months he has been there. Behold, Benenima is
present, Tadua is present, Yashua is present ; ask
them whether he hath fled from Shadi-Marduk, from
Astarti. When all the cities in the land of Gari
were in rebellion, Adma (Udumu), Aduri, Araru,
Mishtu, Migdal, Ain-anab and Sarki were taken, then
later Hawani and Yabesh. Behold, moreover, as
soon as thou hadst written a letter to me I wrote to
him (Ayab) that thou hadst returned from thy journey
(to Palestine ?) And behold he came to Bihishi and
heard the command."

The names Ayab and Yashua recall Job and
Joshua to our minds.

The great alacrity shown in this letter was, as
we already know, most acceptable to Yanhamu.
Another Syrian chief, whose name has been obli-
terated, complained bitterly that Yanhamu had
refused him a passage through his territories,
although he showed the royal summons to Court.
This, indeed, may have been an indirect favour to
his correspondent. Very amusing is a group of
three synoptic letters, written by one scribe for
Biri .... (the name is imperfect) of Hashab,
Ildaya .... of Hazi, and another. These
vassals had evidently taken the field together.
They recite their tale like a chorus of schoolboys
repeating a lesson.

" Behold, we were besieging the cities of the king
my lord in the land of Amki (i.e., cities that had
fallen away and had ceased to pay tribute). Then

ITAKAMA 53

came Itakama, the Prince of Kinza (Kadesh), at the
head of Hittites. Let my lord the king write to
Itakama, and cause him to turn aside and give us
troops that we may win the cities of my lord the
king, and thenceforth dwell in them."

Itakama was specially unpopular with his neigh-
bours. Apparently he was one of the more
powerful allies of Aziru, and as such his special
task was to press as hard as possible on the foes
of the Amorites in southern Ccele-Syria. Perhaps,
however, Aziru and Itakama did not come together
till each for a time had fought his battles alone.
The Hittites in Itakama's force were, of course,
prominently mentioned to alarm Pharaoh. They
may have been Hittite spearmen enrolled by the
prince of Kadesh, much as the Habiri and Sutu
had been enlisted by his chief rival Namyauza.
It is even possible that the soldiers of Kadesh had
always been armed in Hittite fashion ; perhaps
the town was already inhabited by people of
Hittite stock. Later the Hittites actually seized
Kadesh, and it is questionable whether it was for
the first time. Itakama himself, however, scouts
any thought of defection ; nay, he writes :

" To the king my lord, &c. I am thy servant,
but Namyauza hath slandered me to thee, oh my
master. And while he was doing that he occupied
all the inheritance of my fathers in the land of
Kadesh, and my villages hath he set on fire. Do not

54 LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS

the officers of my lord the king and his subjects
know my faithfulness ? I serve thee with all my
brethren, and where there is rebellion against my
lord the king, thither I march with my warriors, my
chariots, and all my brethren. Behold, now Nam-
yauza hath delivered up to the Habiri all the king's
cities in the land of Kadesh and in Ube. But I
will march forth, and if thy gods and thy sun go
before me I will restore these places from the Habiri
to the king that I may show myself subject to him.
I will drive out these Habiri, and my lord the king
shall rejoice in his servant Itakama. I will serve the
king my lord, and all my brethren, and all lands shall
serve him. But Namyauza will I destroy, for I am
for ever a servant of the king my lord."

The land of Ube here named corresponds to the
Hobah of the Bible, mentioned in Genesis xiv. 15,
as the place to which Abram pursued the con-
querors of Sodom, who had carried Lot away.
According to the margin of the Revised Version,
Hobah lay " north of Damascus." In a letter
from Akizzi of Katna (see p. 44), we read, how-
ever, " Oh, my lord the king, as Damascus in the
land of Ube stretches out her hand to thy feet, so
Katna stretches out her hand to thy feet." The
statements may be reconciled by the hypothesis
that in the Old Testament the position of the town
after which the district is named is more exactly
indicated. Other lands named in the tablets are
more difficult to identify. To mitigate a famine in
Gebal, Rib-Addi intended to send for grain from

UGARIT 55

Zalukhi in Ugarit, but his enemies detained his
ships and frustrated his intentions. Zalukhi does
not seem to be mentioned again, and Rib-Addi in
a later letter compares Ugarit with the region
round Tyre as regards its administrative relation
to Egypt. Abi-milki, the Tyrian prefect, once
informs the king, " Fire hath devoured the city of
Ugarit ; one half of it hath it destroyed and not
the other." Finally, a certain Yapakhi-Addi, after
an unsuccessful attempt to get provisions into
Rib-Addi's city Simyra, reproachfully informs
Yanhamu that Aziru has extended his dominions
from Gebal to Ugarit. Ugarit must thus have
been the most northerly of the Egyptian posses-
sions in Asia, and therefore not far from the site
of the modern Alexandretta. This outlying posi-
tion made the little state a somewhat insecure
jewel in the crown of Egypt. King Kadashman-
Bel seems to have been of this opinion when (see
p. 27) he included in his little list of ladies impos-
sible for a royal harem " a maiden from Ugarit."
Evidently he meant to enumerate superciliously
petty foreign "princesses " only.

Of a certain land of Danuna (considered a part
of Canaan) we learn further that its king died,
and that his brother succeeded to the throne
unopposed. One of the two may be identical
with the king of Tana; who, as Rib-Addi
briefly mentions, was about to march to Gebal,

56 POLITICAL CONDITIONS

but was forced by scarcity of water to return
home.

A few letters from women are among the
tablets. Two probably came from the wife of
Milki-El, who was hard pressed by the Habiri
when her husband was called to Egypt. Two
others are addressed, " The handmaid to my
mistress " ; perhaps they were sent along with
Tushratta's letters to his daughter in Egypt and
were from one of her playfellows or relatives.
Finally, the daughter of Napkhuria, married to
Burnaburiash, sent a small tablet to her father
by a special envoy named Kidin-Ramman.
" Before the face of my lord let him come "
indicates that the letter was "to be delivered
in person." It is a pity that this dainty little
letter is for the most part illegible.

V. POLITICAL CONDITIONS IN THE TELL EL
AMARNA PERIOD.

However favourably the religious reform of
King Napkhuria may be estimated on its own
merits, it by no means strengthened the authority
of Egypt in Asia. Of course it could have in no
way been the cause of the state of affairs in Syria
and Canaan; perhaps Amenophis III., whatever
his own great slackness, simply inherited the

SYRIA AND PALESTINE 57

confusion in this part of his empire. The heaviest
blows could not in the long run prevent the
Habiri from returning to the attack again and
again at brief intervals. Their need of expansion
was greater than their fear, and, after all, it
mattered little to Pharaoh whether the Habirite
or the Canaanite paid tribute in Palestine as soon
as the intruder was prepared to acknowledge his
rights. Napkhuria's great weakness was his
obvious partiality for those of his officials who
had become Aten worshippers, and the eagerness
of these men to exploit the royal favour was in
proportion to their disbelief in the permanence of
the movement for reform.

In their Babylonian form the Tell el Amarna
tablets are in the first place the product of the
diplomatic custom of the time, but in many details
of their contents they show that the civilisation
of Western Asia had for centuries been based
on a Babylonian foundation. With the lack of
exact information so frequently to be deplored
in Egyptian accounts, the wordy narratives of
the campaigns of Thutmosis III. scarcely enable
us to determine exactly from which of the greater
powers he had succeeded in wresting districts of
Syria and Palestine. As regards the political
situation there, even at the beginning of the
Kassite Dynasty — a change probably attended
by long internecine struggles — Babylonia seems

58 POLITICAL CONDITIONS

to have lost its western possessions on the
Mediterranean, and we may rather suppose that
it was the kings of Mitani who ruled these terri-
tories in the time of Thutmosis III.

Mitani, though still an extensive power, had
seen its best days at any rate when Tushratta
with difficulty ascended the throne of his fathers.
The name " Hanirabbat" by which it was known
to all its neighbours, must be the older name, and
also that of the original province to which later
acquisitions had been united. It is an established
fact that Eastern Cappadocia, the mountainous
province of Melitene on the Upper Euphrates, was
still known as Hanirabbat about 690 B.C., and
that, on the other hand, Mitani, in the narrower
sense of the term, must have corresponded to the
later Macedonian province of Mygdonia, i.e., Meso-
potamia proper. We have seen, however, that
Ninua, afterwards the Assyrian capital Nineveh,
was part of the dominion of Tushratta, otherwise
he could hardly have sent Ishtar, the goddess of
that city, to Egypt. The subsequent capital of
Assyria may have been the most easterly pos-
session of the kingdom of Hanirabbat-Mitani,
the centre of gravity of which lay farther west-
ward. In the letters there is a remark of the king
of Alashia recommending Pharaoh to exchange
no more gifts with " the kings of the Hittites and
of Shankhar." Mitani is, perhaps, here named

MIT AN I 59

Shankhar from its dependencies in Asia Minor,
or we may suppose it to have been the name of
Tushratta's residence.

In contrast to the Hittite empire, which was
pressing forward from the neck of Asia Minor
through the passes of Issus into Syria, and was
rapidly increasing in power, Mitani stood on the
eve of its fall. Babylonians and Hittites were
alike watching to pluck the ripe fruit, and perhaps
it lacked Little to decide Tushratta, instead of
fighting once more for the crown, to capitulate
to the invading Hittites and see the end of the
kingdom of Mitani. The great "love" of this
king for Egypt was not, therefore, called forth
merely by the glitter of gold, but also by dire
political necessity. The catastrophe occurred
some few decades after the correspondence comes
to an end for us. Mitani vanished from the
states of Western Asia and gave place to small
Aramaic kingdoms, while the eastern boundary,
together with Ninua, was seized by Assyria as
the first step to her subsequent suzerainty in the
East.

But still more swiftly overtaken of fate was
the XVIlIth Dynasty in Egypt. Napkhuria
did not even see the completion of his city at
Tell el Amarna, for he died in 1370 B.C. His
reform followed him, and the victorious champions
of Amon could raze to the ground the hated City

6o POLITICAL CONDITIONS

of the Sun's Disk. They must already have been
on the march when in a happy moment it
occurred to a keeper of the royal archives to
conceal the clay tablets in the earth and thus
save them for remote posterity.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX

THE best translation of the Tell el Amarna tablets avail-
able for English readers is that from the German of H.
Winckler, published by Luzac, London, 1896.

Professor Flinders Petrie's Syria and Egypt from the
Tell el Amarna Letters (Methuen, 1898)13 a synopsis of
the letters as far as they belong to the relations of Egypt
and Syria, with the addition of geographical and historical
notes. In the Inti eduction Professor Petrie gives a
harrowing account of the casual way in which the tablets
were found and of the criminal carelessness with which
these priceless records were subsequently handled.

Some years afier wards, in 1891-2, Professor Petrie
himself excavated what was left of the ruins of the royal
city of Amenhetep IV. An account of his discoveries on
that site and of his deductions from them may be found
in his finely illustrated memoir Tell el Amarna (Methuen,
1894). He particularly emphasises the skill and originality
displayed in the remains of the arts and crafts of the Tell
ei Armarna period, and emphatically points out the
evidence of active connection between Egypt and ^Egean

62 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX

(Mykensean) civilisation at that time. His appreciation
of the character of Akhenaten differs considerably from
that formed by the author of the present pamphlet, and
should be compared with it. In vol. ii. p. 205 et seqq. of
his History of Egypt, Professor Petrie maintains the same
views. The same volume also contains his earlier
synopsis of the Tell el Amarna tablets.

Professor Maspero's account of the historical bearing
of these tablets is worked into the second volume of his
great Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de POrient, which
is entitled Les Premieres Melees des Peuples. A transla-
tion of that work has been issued by the Society for the
Propagation of Christian Knowledge, but in any parts
relating to Biblical history the student will do well to
consult the original.

The bearings of the tablets on Biblical history, and
particularly the evidence they have supplied as to the
early date at which the art of writing was practised in
Syria and Palestine, have been favourite themes of Pro-
fessor Sayce. His arguments and conclusions on these
points may be found in The Higher Criticism and the
Verdict of the Monuments (S.P.C.K. 1894) ; Patriarchal
Palestine (S.P.C.K. 1895); The Egypt of the Hebrews
and Herodotus (Rivingion, Percival & Co., 1896), and
elsewhere.

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &~ 60
London &* Edinburgh

Krug DS

42
The Tell el Amarna period .AS